Almost every Thanksgiving dinner I've attended has been hosted by my mother. There was the one year we went to Maine and the one year I was on a cruise. In both situations, I was with people who meant the world to me even though I wasn’t at home. Even this year I wasn’t “home.” A week before I moved into Ithaca I also moved from my childhood home into a house I describe as a "thumb," just a few towns over.
Realistically, not much has changed — same furniture, same people — the only difference is the location. People always say that “home is where the heart is,” and my heart is not in this house. I left it at 6 Wedgewood Way, and I don’t know if it’s really attached to my body anymore. I like to leave my heart with the people and places that mean the world to me. My mother, my father, my siblings, Paris, Camp Integrity, GJHRR (my BBYO region), the Jersey Shore, Central Park, MoMA, Israel, my friends. These people and things have built me up to who I am today. They have molded me to be a strong woman who knows I will thrive no matter where I go.
So why isn’t the house that I come home to my actual home? Why is there so much attachment to a house that I have so many haunting memories from?
The house I live in is weird, and we only have the lease for a year. It’s really not my home — it’s someone else’s — and they did a sh*t job of taking care of it. But Thanksgiving was spent in that place (and at the mall), and it still doesn’t feel like home, even though all that has changed is my location. I still had apple pie, pumpkin pie, a standing rib roast, some stuffing and cranberry salsa (thanks Aunt Laurie, it’s still a hit). And it all tasted delicious, same as every single year.
I’m thankful to have grown up in such a beautiful home with people who have helped mold me into who I've become. I am thankful for all of the people I have yet to meet who will impact my life in ways I can’t understand at this point in time. I am thankful for knowing that home is not just where I live but also who I'm with. I am thankful for being able to identify the people in my life who will support me and love me no matter what happens. I am thankful for the things in life that bring me joy, because life’s too short to not enjoy what I have in front of me.
So while I don’t love the house I’m in right now, I know that it’s not my home and it doesn’t have to be. This sense of “home” doesn’t need to be a location, it could even be riddled into moments that we let pass by, and maybe I’ll have those moments in this house. And maybe I won’t, but that’s OK. There are people and places near and far, where each time I see them, it feels like I’m coming home. Coming home in the sense where I can’t wait to see them, smell them and admire them in all their little quirks and odd-ends that give me comfort. Home is whatever I make it to be, and I don’t want to leave my heart in this "thumb" of a place. So I won’t.
